With a remarkable growth of related technologies for use with mobile devices, a great variety of mobile devices, e.g., smart phones or tablet PCs, are becoming increasingly popular due to their high usability and portability. Particularly, mobile devices today outgrow their respective traditional electronic devices and hence a single mobile device has the ability to support various user functions traditionally limited to only large electronic devices.
In typical mobile devices, an input unit such as a keypad or key buttons is provided at a certain region separated from a display panel, so that a user of the mobile device may have no need to press or manipulate the display panel. Therefore, distortion of images displayed on the display panel hardly ever occurs unless the display panel itself has a problem.
However, most new mobile devices use a touch screen combined with the display panel. A user who desires to manipulate the mobile device can touch the surface of the display panel. However, applying too much pressure to the panel by a user's touch may exert excessive pressure on a particular spot of the display panel, and this may cause the distortion of images being displayed at the particular spot. Especially in case of the display panel having liquid crystal material therein, an unfavorable phenomenon such as the spread of color or discoloration may appear at a pressed spot due to variations in the concentration of liquid crystals or the like. Moreover, with a growing tendency toward a slim display panel, such an unfavorable phenomenon may frequently occur even in response to small pressure. Although this unfavorable phenomenon disappears by the restoration of liquid crystals to their respective locations after a certain time, the abnormal distortion of displayed images remains until the restoration of the liquid crystals to their respective locations.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.